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It is already the third year of operating of Studio Šterna,
Gallery Marko Jezernik in Piran.
The gallery is pleasantly crowded with drawings,
watercolors, acrylic and oil paintings,
with a variety of unique objects in art glass and
in particular many useful painted items,
including the painted pieces of old furniture or parts thereof.
Inquisitive traveler, who is heading from
Tartini Square on a narrow Bolniska street
towards St. Francis Monastery,
a sight on the inside of a gallery
pulls to step inside the studio.
It is a working place of a painter Marko Jezernik.
He claims himself to be an artist on freedom.
He is a painter, sculptor, graphic artist,
designer, athlete, guitarist, pianist
and poet.
He is drawing a lot with a pencil.
This leads to a series of drawings
with motifs of fish, octopus,
crab, cityscape's of Piran
and other Slovenian cities.
The drawings are the basis for
later watercolors, oils and art glass objects.
In comparison with other similar art studios,
in Jezernik's gallery, attention is especially drawn to
artistic finished parts of old furniture.
The idea of finalizing furniture
has a longer history.
Old and often loose chairs are dismantled
with help of colleagues,
wood is restored, newly painted
and finally dressed in canvas or leather,
on which art motifs are painted or engraved.
In a similar way, or just with the painting,
Marko also artisticly upgrades
respectfully old desktop boards,
table legs, bed sides, parts of the cabinets,
lamps, nightstands, chests
and the like.
Glass...
Almost anything can be created in glass:
modeled flat or blown glass in various forms,
sandblast, etched, fused, painted,
carved and sanded, compose pieces in images...
...and use the mutual interaction of all of that.
It has numerous unique characteristics,
being easy to model, transparent,
permanent and inexpensive.
Its mystery lies in its interior structure.
Although it is solid,
the atoms are randomly arranged,
as in a liquid.
Upon melting the atoms fall
from their normal position in the molecular structure
and, before they can crystallize,
the glass has already hardened.
Because of its loose molecular structure,
glass can be modelled into almost anything:
from a mighty, as a tennis court size,
telescopic mirror to the tinny glass ball.
Glass has its strengths and weaknesses
and whoever works with it must take into consideration
its physical and chemical properties.
Mistakes cannot be remedied.
To rest while working with glass, is out of the question.
Having begun work on a piece,
the artist has no option but to complete it.
Slovenia has many glass artist,
but Marko Jezernik was the first,
to exhibit fused glass as art,
in Celje, Portorož and Kamnik.
His glass can be additionally colored, engraved, or etched,
but it can also be beautiful
without any additional treatment.
Glass is a material which does not allow copying.
Each Jezernik's artwork is unique and signed.
Even when working to order he has free hands.
He is limited only by the size
and purpose of the finished object.
The customer chooses the most suitable
of the variety of designs on paper.
In the early phase,
when I'm selecting the materials for a collage,
I usually take some magazines or newspapers
in which i find images I could use.
In this case,
I was buying it for few years for the rich visual material,
which I could use.
I start looking for pages with images,
that could be suitable
for the creation of my collage.
At this stage, I will postulate the motif on the surface.
The idea is to choose the basic layout of the characters.
Usually, I get interesting idea in some article title
and start to create with it in mind.
Most cutouts are now ready for the collage.
Something like this...
Basis in the bottom will be of the green colors,
with animals that are on the ground,
then we will slowly raise to the heights
and finish with birds.
Now, we got to the rough concept of our future layout.
Of course, all these images will be carefully trimmed later.
Images need to be cleaned and background must be completed in blue.
Now.. how I will succeed in that.. we shall see in the end.
Now we are at a stage,
where we are starting to glue prepared cutouts
on the prepared ground for collage.
This procedure requires remembrance of sequence.
When out cuts are positioned,
due to overlapping of images,
special attention has to be taken
to make it always possible to put image bellow the other one.
In fact, I have started to work at the bottom part of the collage
and I'm putting images towards background.
I could also start at the top,
and then the procedure would be reversed.
However, as I imagined the motif with weight or
on the bottom part of collage, I have reversed the procedure.
All the effects, problems and issues arising
therefrom are resolved in that order.
Selection of motifs is now slightly different from that of the original layout.
the basic outline is almost the same,
but the final view on the collage shows
that the layout was slightly modified.
A few years ago I got an idea,
to use paper napkins and paper handkerchiefs
for the last layer in the final stage of collage creation.
Those consists of multiple layers,
and when separated, these layers become very thin.
When they are glued over the cutouts,
a very good effect is achieved.
The effect is even better in the end,
when the collage is protected with clear lacquer
and gets its true, vivid color.